Happy Christmas!

Photo album ordered!

I love when I can cross a "to-do" item from my list. The item I crossed last was to make an album of my photo a day project.

What I had set to do initially was to take a photo a day from 31/10/2011 to 30/10/2012.  From the start, I decided I wanted to make an album out of it. {what's the point otherwise? 365 random photos in your hard drive?}. I designed a double page for each week - one photo on the left, 6 on the right. And if I missed a day or two, I'd just reduce the number of photos on the right. Easy, and the album would still look OK, and the number of pages limited to little over a 100 instead of potentially 366!

Last week I finished filling my album and this week I designed the cover and sent it to blurb.com to be printed. Can't wait to see the album.

Here's the cover is designed.

The postage stamp shape is Maling Label No. 4 by Paislee Press. Font is Bebas Neue.

This is the last photo:

No! December already?

I am not what I did in November - it went so quickly and I have nothing to show for it.

Well, almost nothing.  Last post I mentioned I had made some cards for charity and didn't take photos. Afterwards I made some more and took photos of 3 of them.

I am not great at colouring, so at first, since they had to be quick cards I didn't think in using some of my images - but eventually I changed my mind and use the snowman in a few of them.

The sentiments are ready made, a digital download from Sahlin Studios.

I also wanted to use a decorated bauble, but couldn't find anything I liked so I made my own and cut it with the Silhouette.

The outside shape I designed in PSE and the inside is part of a snowflake brush by Ars Grafik. Originally the design was much more intricated, but the Silhouette wasn't cutting it right so I had to simplify it. My kinda card. Minimal.

Thanks for looking!

Reflection time

I am not sure if it is with everybody else - sometimes I am focused in scrapbooking, sometimes it is on photography. At the moment it is photography, I am taking a few photos and have been reading a lot.

I made a few Christmas cards in the weekend, but didn't take any photos before I gave to a friend; she's got a stall in a fair to raise funds for a charity and asked for my contribution.

This is one I made a while ago, I stamped in the cardstock with doily patterns in white and green.  It isa good idea to add  a bit of interest in a plain background. I used the same technique in some of my Christmas cards, using blue cardstock and white and dark blue ink - it looks a bit like snow, which is seasonal.TLF!

September 2012 summary

We didn't do much in September, the only thing I wanted to register was that the kids went back to school on the 3rd. Looking at the layout now I think I should add a little note recording which year they are at and their teachers' names.

The day after...

Halloween last year, I started my Photo-A-Day project. I thought it was project 365, but I forgot to take into account that  2012 was a leap year. Silly me. Not that it mattered, because I didn't take a photo everyday, but I took a photo most of days. I haven't counted how many but I would guess my "success rate" was somewhere between 300 and 320. I have uploaded most of the photos in shuttercal - when I am done, I'll count them up and let you know.

What is worth it? YES. Did I become a better photographer? Probably. What could I have done better? I should have challenged myself more. Did I enjoy it? Yes. 

This Halloween was my first free day, no obligatory photos. But of course, I took some (bad) photos of  my children in costume. Also we drove from Tralee to Dingle and back - beautiful scenery - it was a rainy day with sunshine too,  and we saw a record number of rainbows, 4 or 5 I think. We were in the car and couldn't stop, but I managed to take a few pics from the car.

And yes, I will continue to take a photo a day.

I am giving myself a few days' break. I want to first make an album with all the photos I took. Also I want thing about what I want to accomplish with my second year of photos.

If you have in any way interested in photography, it is a great exercise, I thought I would become to hate it at some stage but it didn't happen. Granted, there were some days (weeks!) when I couldn't think of anything interested to photography but on the whole it was a great experience.

Random Memories Mini

I took the  Pop of the Page class to learn how to layer elements, but I meant to use the skills mostly for decorating presents, boxes, cards and the such, because I prefer my scrapbook layouts to be flat-ish.

But inspired by Jen Jockish and the amazing contributors to the class, I thought maybe I could risk a mini book? My first thought was to use some black & white pictures, but when I went looking for them I found a box with lots of memorabilia and decided to make a mini album of random memories instead.

I had a very small album with a big wire binding - ideal for bulky pages, so I started working. Everything but the kitchen sink was my motto!

Cover:

Opening page:

One of the things Jen said was to have some repeating elements in the mini, to give a sense of unity, so I decide to use the right page to house memorabilia/photos/decorations and on the left have the same shape journaling card.

The first page has our temporary membership cards for a sports club in my hometown. The pocket holds our cards and I used a spare photo of my daughter to decorate the front. I sanded the points of the leaf shaped pins to make them blunt. I am scared of pins!

My son's first proper shoes. The lady at the shop (Clark's) took a polaroid photo of him with the shoes, and gave a note with his shoe size and date.

Disneyland Paris. I took lots of photos which never made into an album... Here are the entrance tickets, plus one for the Paris metro. I secured the tickets with washi tape and you can see all of them separately.

Spare of passport photos...

I think this was the only time the four of us squeezed instead a photobooth. Must do it again!

Tickets for a Thomas the Tank Engine show. The Thomas image is the label for a shoe. Hoarder, me?

When my daughter had her first haircut, the hairdresser put a little bit of the hair in cellophane paper. I forgot I had it. This page is still missing something, I'll probably add a die cut later.

There's still lots of empty pages, but the album is already quite bulky so I am deciding if I will add more to it or not.

TFL!

July and August 2012

Project 12 (monthly summary layout) is the thing I have been doing longest, but this year I am way behind. I enjoy it and don't want to stop doing it because, it gives a summary of what we've been up to in 12 pages per year. And second, makes me work hard to come up with multiphoto layouts.

July 2012

 I am not sure if I ever told this, but I work most of my layout in the computer. Then I make then in paper. This one was no exception. In this case I printed most directly on a 12x12 photo paper - the wood grain and photos. Then I put the strips of yellow neon papers and the Silhouette cut white paper strip. I had a beautiful digital paper between the photos, but it was light and didn't stand out so I aded some real papers between the photos. "Vintage" Basic Grey :-)

August 2012

I wanted to make a layout based on triangle shapes. Love the colourful paper - ILS is a Polish company which is making fabulous papers.

Pink Card

A while ago, I made two "kits" using scraps of papers. I used the first one quickly but only now attacked the second kit, which has mostly pink/green with a touch of cream and black:

This was inspired by a layout by Wilna Furstenberg in the Pop Of the Page class I am taking.

The layout is lovely but the page was looking a bit boring until I added the butterflies which I punched from tracing paper. Still not a patch on the original but much better.

Have a good weekend!

Summer Album

What makes me very happy about this album is that I worked while it was happening and finished at the beginning of September.

I wish I was always organised like that, it is much more fun when the events are fresh in my mind.

At the beginning of the summer I asked the children to list a few things they wanted to do. While probably they would'nt be able to do everything, at least we could try to do a few of the things they wanted - I also said to keep it realistic. Still, they wanted a pet and my daughter wanted to spend €50 in Claire's.  I said no to the first one and told my daughter that unless she had a plan on how to earn that amount of money, it wasn't going to happen! :-)

 The mini album recorded a few of the things we wanted to do, plus a few unplanned things. I wanted to make my children aware of how lucky they are, and also how many things we did in the two months of summer holidays.

I started off with a landscape format sketch pad, which I first trimmed, then disassembled. I used the Silhouette to cut the cover, and some extra pages in patterned paper.

Here are some of the pages.

Cover:

I was initially concerned I wouldn't have enough things to fill the pages - I had planned a double page per event. As it turned out, I had to down because the album was getting too bulky.

 Ice cream is a must:

So are summer camps:

1st of August was our 10 year anniversary of my daughter's adoption day:

We visited tayto park:

 Holiday in Westport (Co Mayo) and Cascais (Portugal). Here's Portugal's page:

By then, the pages were getting too bulk, so I put 4 events in a double page. Notice the bottom  left photos. I put the kids to clean the house. They did complain, but not too much ;-)

And the last page. Getting ready to go back to school. My son wanted Moshi Monsters name tags for his books. And there we still things I wanted to record which I stuck to the inside of the back cover page.

And we also went to the cinema.

I brought my son to see The Lorax while my husband watched Spiderman with my daughter. Later I brought both of the for the Dog Day Diary of a Wimpy Kit. The bottom film was supposed to be The Amazing Spiderman, but by mistake i put The Dark Knight Rise, which was a film I went with my husband to watch...

My name is Heaven... (sharing a Silhouette file)

as in full of good intentions. One of the said intentions was to share a die-cut every couple of weeks or so.

That was two months ago. Finally I have my first share, a few summer words. I know summer is over but scrapbookers are always catching up as opposed to cardmakers who are always making ahead, so it might be of use to someone.

Here are some words in .studio format, for cutting with the Silhouette, download it here. It is my first upload in Media Fire, let me know if it doesn't work.

I used some of the words in my summer mini, which I'll post in the weekend. Here is one of the pages,where I used "travel".

Red

Last week I decided to take  monochromatic colours. Tuesday I choose red.

Gold and Teal

I love this combination!

Seven

I try to make a layout for each birthday of my children. My son's birthday was back in June - I finally made it!

(removed for publication; to be published in March 2013

apologies for the inconvenience)

A layered card

I am doing a class in Studio Calico, Pop Off The Page, and it is all about layering.  That's something I am really bad at, so I signed for the course straight away.

It is great to make something a bit different from my normal style, but at the same it I struggle with chance, so I took a easy option and started with a card instead of a scrapbook page:

One page of my Summer mini album

At the beginning of the summer holidays, I asked my children to list the things they wanted to do. I told them that not everything would be accomplished (get a cat? no! spend €50 in Claire's? no!) but at least it would be something to aim for.

Last year we made the list, but I never made the mini album I meant to, this year I decided that I would work in the album and have it ready by the end of the school holidays.

School starts tomorrow, and I only have a couple of pages to finish, so i am quite proud of it. Hopefully I'll have it ready by tomorrow so we can look it together and see how much fun we had in the last two months.

I'll share the cover and some pages later this week - today I only have one page, our trip to Cascais, Portugal. The left page was inspired by a layout by supertoni, for a scraplift challenge in Studio Calico's forum.

Here's supertoni's original layout:

Thanks for the inspiration, Toni!

10 @ 10

In general I like big photos and designs that cover the whole page, however I also love seeing layouts like Allison Waken's and Anna-Maria Wolniak's, where small photos are enhanced by layered papers, painting, stamping and aparent random elements which are all combined together beautifully.

Inspired by them, I tried something a little bit different from my usual style.

I stamped, inked, used bits of post-it notes, washi tape and tracing papers.

I made a list of ten items and asked my daughtr to choose the favourite of each (movie, food, song, friend, etc).

Confessions of a paper hoarder - Part 1

We, crafters, are like magpies, attracted to shiny, beautiful things. The problem is when we start accumulating more beautiful things that we are able to use.

For the last couple of years, I haven't bought much - I cancelled my scrapbooking kit subscription and have been very economic with my purchases. But still, my pile of stuff doesn't seem to get any smaller, because I have a hoarder. I keep papers I don't like much (either I gone off them or it came in a kit), tiny paper scraps, letters stickers sheets when there's probably not enough letters to make a word out if it :-) the list is endless.

Ridiculous, I know.  I am trying to get my craft supplies to a manageable level by using what is usable and hopefully throwing away what is not.

I am hoping to have a regular "column" in my blog keeping track of the progress I am making in using or recycling my junk.  Like any addiction, it is a lifetime battle to keep the stash levels under control.

This month I started with my papers scraps. Paper scraps are great to make cards, because they are the right size and also because I can make cards much faster than scrapbook pages. (I am a slow scrapper).

What works for me is to make a kit, that is, put together a set of papers which goes together well and making cards using these papers. This is the kit I put together:

Yellow, orange and blues.

It is embarassing to show the size of scraps I keep...

Anyway, can I show you how many cards I made from these papers?

Paper candles - great way to use scraps!

For the candle body I rolled up a piece of paper around a pencil. The flame is a leaf punch which I inked or coloured with red. I think the inking looks best. The little framed buttons are the inspiration for my kit. Something i made for PaperPlay Challenges a while ago.

Then I got star struck:

Using paper strips in this one:

Even the Mami Doodles image was one I had printed ages ago and had half coloured it. So I finished it and used it.

By then I thought I was done, but there was this cute butterfly in the kit which deserved to be used so I made yet another one:

You probably can't see but I used the sewing machine in 4 or the cards, the stitching finished the cards really well.

Thanks for looking!

Portraits

Every week I decide that in the next one, I'll definitely take a photo a day. Then I get distracted and don't. It is very frustrating specially as it is completely under my control.
But as I sat down to look at last week's photos, I realised that at least I took some photos - and some of then are actually ok. Not perfect, but ok.

I like this spot in the kitchen, with a big window in front, but I noticed that the oposite side was dark so to remedy it I persuaded my son to hold a big white card to act as a reflector. Of course, being who he is, he wouldn't hold it right and it got in the photo and I had to edit it out.

Sigh. I have two children. One is cooperative and the other is not. Won't be the model and won't be the assistant either...